Challenge

We have all seen the explosion of new and exciting mobile technologies in recent years. But this development has created challenges for mobile companies.  Vodafone Ireland, has to make the most of these technologies to provide its customers with the best mobile content. The Vodafone Live portal must provide fresh, news and entertainment with an Irish feel in order to meet their revenue targets.

But finding quality home-grown content providers with technical abilities who are willing to commit to mobile content distribution can be difficult. Providing this content in a visually appealing way is the first challenge. Worse, the effort involved in integrating a content provider in the first place can inhibit replacing them down the road, even when the new content is superior.  Upgrades to platforms can also cause headaches, having to work through a new spec with multiple content providers.

Vodafone Ireland needed a solution which overcame these integration (and re-integration) nightmares.

Solution

Vodafone turned to Oakpoint's M-factory solution and has never looked back.

M-factory is an advanced web-based tool which enables publishing of content to mobile devices. The concept behind M-factory is a WYSIWYG tool that enables content providers with minimal technical knowledge to quickly and easily present their content (video, audio, ring-tones, games, textual copy etc.) in the most attractive way.

M-factory provides WAP (including Quiz & Poll functionality), MMS and SMS content publishing/management functionality with a clear, straight-forward user-interface which shields users from the technical complexities.

With the advent of 3G in Ireland, M-factory was integrated with Vodafone Global's preferred video ingestion system (DV4's IVAM software). This allows M-factory users to link to any video they choose without having to know where the video is stored or even what the URL for the video is. Editors can simply choose by video title - it couldn't be easier.

Benefits

Vodafone Ireland has been able to cherry-pick the best of breed for all its content without the need for technical specification, integration or re-integration meetings or synchronisation of deployment. Vodafone Ireland can now quickly and easily deploy new content in the most visually appealing way without having to worry about the technology

Facts & Figures

Since 2003, Vodafone Ireland has created 747 sites (as of October 2006) using the M-factory tool. In the same period there has been a 7.7-fold increase in hit rates to Vodafone Ireland servers and the average number of pages visited by a typical mobile user has increased four-fold. This amazing growth was achieved without any increase in staffing levels within the content production unit working with content companies with widely diverse mobile technology resources.

Not only did Vodafone Ireland save money through lower integration costs, it made huge savings in time spent on integration - which in turn increased profits. Instead of having to integrate ten different content companies, with multiple Vodafone systems, all Vodafone Ireland had to do was integrate once with Oakpoint.

Summary

M-factory has in the last three years enabled Vodafone Ireland to transform its WAP, MMS and SMS services into a unique mobile offering which is more user-friendly than any other provider. Vodafone has saved hundreds of thousands of euro and countless hours in integration pain. Vodafone's content team has been freed up to do what they do best - create a popular, attractive, informative portal with a distinctive Irish feel.